Interview | Cinema workers’ strike in Glasgow

Workers at Vue’s St Enoch cinema in Glasgow are taking strike action for a living wage, paid travel for late shifts, contracted hours and union recognition. Tony Boardman speaks to Max and Rebecca about their strike action and how we can support them.

Tony: Can you tell us why you are on strike today?

Max: We’re on strike for an equal and living wage. Some workers under 21 years old are being paid £10 an hour for the same work as those over 21. We’re also striking for safe and subsidised travel home after late shifts – some screenings finish after 2 or 3 in the morning. For the Avatar release on 18 December, temporary staff were at work until 4am, with no safe way home. We’re also out on strike for union recognition and better contracted hours.

Tony: What would it mean for you to win your demands?

Rebecca: It would mean a lot. Whenever issues of pay or transport get brought up, the response is always – this is how it is, we can’t do anything about it. By striking we are harming the company’s profits – they are hiring temporary workers, moving people around and putting them up in hotels. And I think as well, that also draws the line, like if absolutely nothing changes, management knows we are willing to stand up and we aren’t willing to just take the sort of ‘we say jump’ mentality at face value. 

Max: In the hospitality sector, workers are exploited and taught to settle for what they can get, even if it’s crumbs. Vue workers are mainly young people in their 20s and winning the strike would be absolutely immense. It would show everybody else in shitty jobs that they too can make a difference, instead of just accepting what we can get. For safe transport after late shifts, I sometimes have to set aside £400 at the start of the month, because I can get up to three late shifts a week. Getting home can cost £20 a taxi for me to get home and with other expenses there are times where I genuinely can’t afford it. I’ve walked the two and a half hour route home to Anniesland multiple times and I know other staff members who have had to do the same. Winning would mean that people can get home safely. The city centre at that hour isn’t safe, especially for young people and young women. 

Tony: Can you tell us about what a regular shift looks like? 

Max: So as a team leader, I would open and close the building. For your customer assistant, which is the majority of the staff, you’re serving popcorn, talking to customers, taking tickets, and often dealing with people running in. Security at St Enoch centre doesn’t have a Service Industry Authority licence and is quite unhelpful, so we handle a lot ourselves. We also have to clean up all kinds of mess after screenings, check people’s ID – which a lot of people think we’re jobsworths for – but it’s our legal responsibility. These tasks that might seem easy and can be taken over by AI, yet it can never be fully replaced. As long as cinemas live, they will need workers to run them. 

Tony: How did you organise towards this strike, believed to be the first at a Scottish cinema? Did you take inspiration from other strikes?

Max: I’m constantly seeing people on strike at the moment on social media. I think growing up, especially for my generation, no one talks about unions. I started seeing some of the recent strikes that have been happening at the Village Hotel. The Birmingham bin strikes also gave us the push to say: we can get somewhere with this, and we can be out and we can do this.

At our work, a small group of us started talking when a colleague said he had enough. Issues like not getting our rotas until two days before the shift made it impossible to have a life. It was sort of like, we deserve better, so our colleague got in contact with Unite. We were gonna go down the route of trying to get union recognition without striking, but we found that it’s not going to put enough pressure on the company, who would probably just fob us off until we just gave up. But we managed to get an amazing turnout for our ballot. It was 100 percent yes to strike action with an 80 per cent turnout. We have the majority of the staff out here with us. 

Rebecca: When we knew it was safe, people would talk to each other on shift. When there would be management around, it would get quite quiet but we would organise in group chats as well. Some people would meet outside of work because they were friends outside of work. There would be union meetings at Unite where things would be discussed and disclosed and there would be questions from people who wanted to know what was going on. Once we got to a big enough size, especially once the knowledge of the strike came out, everything really sped up. Out of 50 staff, only five haven’t joined, three of whom are upper management. Almost the entire workforce is participating.

Tony: Did you have to convince people and what were people’s concerns who weren’t on board in the first place?

Rebecca: Some people needed convincing because they’d never done anything like this before. A lot of concerns were around retaliation – losing shifts, pay or even their jobs. To reassure people we repeatedly explained their rights, what was possible, encouraged attendance at union meetings for accurate information. Once people understood, most were happy to join.

Tony: Can you tell us a bit about how management has responded?

Max: Management has largely fobbed us off. The general manager recently made a snarky comment assuming we’d give up on 7 January. But we’re hoping to extend and we’ll stay out here for as long as it takes for them to take us seriously. Management have brought in temporary staff, most of whom are under the age of 18, which is unheard of for our site. In the three years I’ve worked there, we have never hired anybody under the age of 18 because they can’t serve alcohol, do toilet checks or check for over-18 films. This makes everyone else’s work harder, as we have to cover the tasks they cannot do. The temporary staff are often desperate and unaware of their rights, and they won’t know that if they come out and join us they can still get paid. We saw the hiring advertised on Indeed, but when we asked management about it, they claimed not to know and sent the staff to the Fort, a Vue site in Easterhouse, Glasgow, for training so we could not speak to them.

Tony: And what’s the solidarity been like from members of the public? What do you think this means for other cinema workers around the country, across Britain? And how can we support you?

Max: Oh, it’s been amazing. We are constantly getting people coming up and asking how they can support us. We’ve got people that will stand and speak to us for like 20 minutes at a time, and we tell them that we need to keep going and we’re not going to stop. I mean, the constant support from members of the public is going to keep us going. I hope that cinema workers across Britain realise that we’re worth something, that cinema is not dying as people think it is – cinema is actually probably better than it’s ever been at the moment. I hope that these cinema workers, instead of just accepting it and hearing the profits that these cinema chains are making, that they stand up and say, I’m worth way more than this and they join our fight. 

We have a petition and a GoFundMe. Come out and support us on the picket, we’re at the Argyle Street station entrance to the St Enoch Centre from 3-7pm every day from now until 7 January 2026. Yeah, and don’t visit Vue. Boycott Vue until they come and speak to us.